iTunes Match Bugs

[WisdomWolf]

It seems pretty clear that iTunes Match is functionally still at the beta level. I have high hopes for this service and am excited about it, but right now I'm seeing some fairly frustrating bugs. I'm interested to see if anyone else is experiencing the same issues and if there is a workaround.

Background: I signed up for the service yesterday on my Windows 7 desktop and had it scan my library of 5K songs. 3.5K Matched and about 1.5K were uploaded. Only 9 tracks failed to upload and show error. I then deleted all songs from my iPad 2 (64GB 3G, iOS 5.0.1) and setup iTunes Match on it. I also setup iTunes Match on my 2010 MacBook Pro with an empty library.

1. Smart Playlists are completely broken on iOS. The playlists that I create show up, but either contain no songs (Recently Added) or have way too many songs (3888 songs in my Top 25 List).

2. Genius Playlists can no longer be created from iOS devices. The button is simply gone.

3. Play counts are not syncing correctly. The playcount from the initial upload gets pushed into the cloud, but when I play songs from iPad or MacBook the new play count doesn't get pushed to the cloud. If a song was at 20 plays, then I play it once (bringing it to 21) it resets back to 20 if iTunes is closed and reopened. However, if I play the song on the computer that uploaded it the new play count does get pushed to the cloud.

4. Album Artwork issues. If the song is uploaded before artwork is added/changed then the artwork in the cloud is not updated. The song has to be deleted from the cloud and reuploaded to update artwork. Matched songs are hit-or-miss. Some show proper artwork and some do not, regardless of the presence of artwork in original file used for matching.

I'm pretty sure most of these are small glitches that will be quickly fixed, but that doesn't make them any less annoying. The first bug is particularly killer since Smart Playlists are the whole reason I still use iTunes and was looking forward to getting my library in sync across all my devices. I have noted that when metadata is altered from any device (like changing the rating) it is reflected on the other devices in a matter of seconds. I don't understand why playcount isn't the same.

 

[clayj]

Here are the bugs that I've seen so far:

MIXED "MATCHED"/"UPLOADED" ALBUMS: I have quite a few albums where there is a mix of track types -- some are Matched, some are Uploaded. Often it's just one track that's different from the others. There needs to be a way to "kick" iTunes Match and force it to reattempt a match, or to set a particular album to be entirely Uploaded or entirely Matched (if the entire album is available in iTunes). This should NOT require having to delete the track from iTunes on my Mac.

"BLANK" TRACKS WON'T UPLOAD: Specifically, "Pause" by Rob Dougan (from "Furious Angels", CD1). This track is 32 seconds of silence. iTunes Match reports an Error and cannot upload this track.

ALBUM ART MISSING IN ITUNES: Several of my albums have lost their art. The tracks themselves are not missing art; if I right-click a track and click Get Info, the album art is still there (and in fact it starts showing up again in the browser in iTunes). But when I restart iTunes, the art has often "disappeared" again.

Not a bug, but a feature request: We should be able to right-click a track (or tracks) and have an option to delete it from iCloud/iTunes Match WITHOUT having to delete it from iTunes. This would allow us to quickly try to reconcile a specific track (or tracks). We should also have an option to completely flush out our entire iCloud/iTunes Match music collection and start over from scratch.

Also, iTunes needs to have a way for us to report issues with specific tracks so that they can do what they need to on their end to straighten these problems out QUICKLY. I have iTunes Match configured on my Mac Pro, but I am reluctant to actually start using it on my iPhone and my iPad until some of the problems I've read about have been addressed.

 

[balamw]

"BLANK" TRACKS WON'T UPLOAD: Specifically, "Pause" by Rob Dougan (from "Furious Angels", CD1). This track is 32 seconds of silence. iTunes Match reports an Error and cannot upload this track.

I suspect that this is a feature. It is probably designed to stop folks from building an "album" of blank tracks with the right tags for an album and matching them using that.

I haven't dared give it my whole library yet, but am testing the waters with a separate library. I do get some pretty common albums with individual uploaded tracks, but overall it seems to work quite well and FAST.

B

 

[WisdomWolf]

I suspect that this is a feature. It is probably designed to stop folks from building an "album" of blank tracks with the right tags for an album and matching them using that.

I haven't dared give it my whole library yet, but am testing the waters with a separate library. I do get some pretty common albums with individual uploaded tracks, but overall it seems to work quite well and FAST.

B

Actually it's most likely due to the fact that they use a sound fingerprint to identify a song. When the sample is completely blank they can't determine if this is on purpose or by accident and thus throw an error rather than uploading. This is something that I don't expect will be fixed, at least not any time in the near future.

 

[clayj]

I suspect that this is a feature. It is probably designed to stop folks from building an "album" of blank tracks with the right tags for an album and matching them using that.

Given that they are supposedly using audio fingerprinting, that theory doesn't really float.

Anyway, they should have in their database:

Song title = "Pause"
Artist = Rob Dougan
Length = 0:32
Audio fingerprint = song is empty
Result? = this is a legitimate song

If Apple is going to get into this business, they have to be able to recognize LEGITIMATE music no matter how weird it may be. They recognized the rest of that album; they should be able to recognize the ENTIRE album.

 

[eternalife]

One BIG Bug

4284 Songs Total
889 Found
=
21% Matched

What's up with that? I muck with my meta but this is ridiculous. And if they use fingerprints it shouldn't matter, should it?

It is painfully uploading the other 3395 songs it couldn't find. With my upload speeds I think my 1-year contract will run out before it's done.

Do you think as bugs get fixed with the 'Match' logic songs that were uploaded will be cleared from their storage and marked as 'Matched'?

 

[AleksSD]

I can't figure out why some songs (which I purchased on iTunes) give me the message that it can't be uploaded in to iCloud.

 

[nargan]

No good way to delete all locally stored music on iOS

Prior to iTunes Match, you could go to Settings > General > Usage > Music and delete all your music at once. While that particular setting is still present in iOS, it doesn't seem to work when iTunes Match is enabled. I can delete all my music, which causes the usage view to pretend that I freed up space on my iPhone, but there are a few problems:

1. When I open the Music app, the albums previously downloaded appear to still be in my local library.

2. When I attempt to play said albums, the Music app tries to start playing them, but the play counter doesn't advance.

3. If I go back to Settings after a period of time, and look at my usage, I will see that my Music data has crept back up from zero to a few GB (but usually less than what it was before I hit delete, e.g. only 6.6 GB now where it was previously 9 GB).

4. I CAN manually delete the glitched-out here-but-not-here local albums by swiping after I've deleted everything from Settings. This allows me to re-download them from iCloud.

Any suggestions?

Can others confirm this is a bug?

Update: leaving the iPhone alone for a couple of hours seems to have caused the music to actually be deleted. I'm still not sure what the actual lag time is between the delete command and the Music app reflecting the music deletion.

I feel like in an ideal world, there would be a toggle for an option line "Allow up to X GB of local music storage and delete music based on least recent date played after I reach that limit."

 

[High on Life]

Song/Album Total Bug

I just updated my library of 11,085 songs and 968 albums, all of which are matched or uploaded.
However, on my iPhone it shows my iPod as holding 11,324 songs and 974 albums.
"Hide Music Not On This Computer" is not checked in iTunes.

UPDATE
It seems like the only way to 'reset' iTunes Match is to toggle Settings > Music > iTunes Match.
This deletes all cloud music, then adds it back in. It takes a while, but all the album artwork eventually gets added.

However, I now have several duplicates of albums that I've edited since my first Match.

Has anyone been able to successfully edit a song's metadata in iTunes and have it updated on your phone?

 

[alecp763]

Play Counts

I can +1 the play count error...

I signed up for Match last night, and it matched/uploaded just about all of my music. I've been messing with it today trying to figure out how it works, and ran into an error that I can't figure out.

I downloaded a new album (CAMP by Childish Gambino, if you're wondering), imported it into iTunes, uploaded it to iCloud/Match, and it was listed as "Matched." The album showed up on my iPhone and my iPad. Perfect!

I listened to it a few times on my phone, rated a few songs, etc, then opened up iTunes to see what it did. It pulled down the ratings from the cloud, but not the play counts. I plugged my phone in and synced (wifi sync wasn't connecting due to an unknown error) in hopes that an itunes sync would pull the play counts down, but no luck...

Anyone else tried this or have a similar experience? I have a few playlists built around play counts and would really like to have my play counts updated. Thanks!

 

[bushido]

when i download a song with the cloud icon it doesnt finish the blue circle and eventually crashes the music app, when i open the app again its suddenly downloaded

and i also got the freaking missing album cover bugs even with songs that i synched using itunes before i started that whole iTunes Match mess

 

[Mak47]

I'm usually pretty forgiving when it comes to new products and services, but I have to say I'm quite disappointed with iTunes Match so far. It was in no shape to be released to the public. Fortunately, most people won't have the slightest clue what it is, so they won't use it anyway.

Out of around 3100 songs, just over 2000 were matched. Then about 800 were uploaded. This left around 300 songs with errors. In order to get them to the cloud I had to secondary click on each one, "Get Info", read the error that the file couldn't be located, tell it to locate it, find it exactly where it should be in iTunes, then tell it to upload again. There was no way to do this for multiple tracks. Maybe there was an easier way, but if so, I couldn't find it.

So, it looks like I'll be fixing my iCloud music for most of the night. I'm sure this will be a really great service, but it is in no way ready for public release. This was very un-Apple-like. Minor bugs are one thing, but this is a mess.

"Can anybody tell me what iTunes Match is supposed to do?"

"Yeah. Automatically match and upload all of a users music into the cloud so they can access it anywhere and they don't have to spend hours and hours manually uploading songs."

"So why the f*@! doesn't it do that?!?"

 

[Angry-Birds]

I'm usually pretty forgiving when it comes to new products and services, but I have to say I'm quite disappointed with iTunes Match so far. It was in no shape to be released to the public.

I couldn't agree more- despite the delays, it still feels rushed to market. About 40% of my library that is available for purchase on iTunes can't be matched. No idea why.

Today at the gym I also noticed that many albums showed up twice (my library doesn't have any duplicates). I deleted one and, they both become available for download (cloud icon next to it). I then tried to download one, and they both began downloading. Removing them from iTunes and re-importing (iTunes match scans them again) fixed it, but what a pain in the rear for about 15 different albums.

 

[jeremyisweary]

I've been rather lucky, and haven't had too many issues to complain about. Earlier today, I uploaded a mp3 album to iTunes. iTunes says it's been matched to iCloud, and the cloud symbol next to "Music" isn't moving. However, that album is still no where to be found on my iPhone.

I agree with the general sentiment that iTunes Match has been rushed. I have yet to read of anyone having a seamless experience.

 

[TimWilliam]

My upload speed is also abysmally slow...like, 15" for a single song.

4284 Songs Total
889 Found
=
21% Matched

What's up with that? I muck with my meta but this is ridiculous. And if they use fingerprints it shouldn't matter, should it?

It is painfully uploading the other 3395 songs it couldn't find. With my upload speeds I think my 1-year contract will run out before it's done.

Do you think as bugs get fixed with the 'Match' logic songs that were uploaded will be cleared from their storage and marked as 'Matched'?

----------

Add to the bug list: my playlists don't show up on my 3GS. But they DO show perfectly on my ipad2. Grrrrr

It seems pretty clear that iTunes Match is functionally still at the beta level. I have high hopes for this service and am excited about it, but right now I'm seeing some fairly frustrating bugs. I'm interested to see if anyone else is experiencing the same issues and if there is a workaround.

Background: I signed up for the service yesterday on my Windows 7 desktop and had it scan my library of 5K songs. 3.5K Matched and about 1.5K were uploaded. Only 9 tracks failed to upload and show error. I then deleted all songs from my iPad 2 (64GB 3G, iOS 5.0.1) and setup iTunes Match on it. I also setup iTunes Match on my 2010 MacBook Pro with an empty library.

1. Smart Playlists are completely broken on iOS. The playlists that I create show up, but either contain no songs (Recently Added) or have way too many songs (3888 songs in my Top 25 List).

2. Genius Playlists can no longer be created from iOS devices. The button is simply gone.

3. Play counts are not syncing correctly. The playcount from the initial upload gets pushed into the cloud, but when I play songs from iPad or MacBook the new play count doesn't get pushed to the cloud. If a song was at 20 plays, then I play it once (bringing it to 21) it resets back to 20 if iTunes is closed and reopened. However, if I play the song on the computer that uploaded it the new play count does get pushed to the cloud.

4. Album Artwork issues. If the song is uploaded before artwork is added/changed then the artwork in the cloud is not updated. The song has to be deleted from the cloud and reuploaded to update artwork. Matched songs are hit-or-miss. Some show proper artwork and some do not, regardless of the presence of artwork in original file used for matching.

I'm pretty sure most of these are small glitches that will be quickly fixed, but that doesn't make them any less annoying. The first bug is particularly killer since Smart Playlists are the whole reason I still use iTunes and was looking forward to getting my library in sync across all my devices. I have noted that when metadata is altered from any device (like changing the rating) it is reflected on the other devices in a matter of seconds. I don't understand why playcount isn't the same.

 

[legacyb4]

Not to mention that iTunes Match seems to be down right now...

I was in the middle of importing some of my archived MP3s and now iTunes doesn't even want to recognize those files being imported (despite actually being imported and showing up on a Recently Added playlist)...

Sigh, the price you pay for adopting early.

 

[jeremyisweary]

Yeah, I think it was just down as well. Uploaded another album after my last post, and I had the same issue. About five minutes ago, both went through and are now available on my iPhone. However, none of my iCloud songs on my iPhone have album artwork now. A couple hours ago, they all did. #fail

 

[WisdomWolf]

It seems pretty apparent that the iOS implementation of iTM (arguably where it matters most) is just downright broken.

-Smart Playlists don't work correctly at all
-Genius Playlists can't be created
-Album Artwork is spotty for no reason
-Played data (Play Count and Last Played) does not transmit from device to cloud

Very troublesome considering that smart playlists and metadata are the one thing that sets iTM apart from Amazon Cloud and Google Music. If those don't work properly then it's kind of useless.

 

[bushido]

is it possible that match has a problem with songs purchased on a different account? i left my mac on over night and its still stuck on uploading the last 61 songs. my fan also runs like crazy and i cant quit itunes unless i kill the process.

cant i tell itunes to ignore the songs purchased with a different account? i cant use itunes anymore because it keeps trying to upload those songs and its making my mac run crazy everytime i start itunes

 

[Shadylane315]

Hey guys,

There is a lot of "Junk" music that I got 5 years ago from those "Free 100 Song" Download Card. I'm deleting it from iTunes AND iCloud but it still show up on my idevices!!!! Is there anyway to delete it from my account FOREVER!

 

[Heebeejeebies]

I'm usually pretty forgiving when it comes to new products and services, but I have to say I'm quite disappointed with iTunes Match so far. It was in no shape to be released to the public. Fortunately, most people won't have the slightest clue what it is, so they won't use it anyway.

Out of around 3100 songs, just over 2000 were matched. Then about 800 were uploaded. This left around 300 songs with errors. In order to get them to the cloud I had to secondary click on each one, "Get Info", read the error that the file couldn't be located, tell it to locate it, find it exactly where it should be in iTunes, then tell it to upload again. There was no way to do this for multiple tracks. Maybe there was an easier way, but if so, I couldn't find it.

So, it looks like I'll be fixing my iCloud music for most of the night. I'm sure this will be a really great service, but it is in no way ready for public release. This was very un-Apple-like. Minor bugs are one thing, but this is a mess.

"Can anybody tell me what iTunes Match is supposed to do?"

"Yeah. Automatically match and upload all of a users music into the cloud so they can access it anywhere and they don't have to spend hours and hours manually uploading songs."

"So why the f*@! doesn't it do that?!?"

Hey guys,

There is a lot of "Junk" music that I got 5 years ago from those "Free 100 Song" Download Card. I'm deleting it from iTunes AND iCloud but it still show up on my idevices!!!! Is there anyway to delete it from my account FOREVER!

If you go to Store > Update iTunes Match, it should be removed from your iDevices.

 

[JPM42]

Not to mention that iTunes Match seems to be down right now...

I was in the middle of importing some of my archived MP3s and now iTunes doesn't even want to recognize those files being imported (despite actually being imported and showing up on a Recently Added playlist)...

Sigh, the price you pay for adopting early.

I had the same issue, tonight. I thought turning off and back on iTunes Match would solve the problem, and it actually did import the songs that were stuck. However, now my entire library is listing as "Waiting". I hope that merely turning off iTunes Match didn't actually wipe out and reset the cloud itself.

 

[Shadylane315]

If you go to Store > Update iTunes Match, it should be removed from your iDevices.

Ok, Right now my iPad is processing and the spinning circle is working. We'll see if that helps

----------

Didn't work. Still showing the same results. Completely removed from iTunes but still shows the music on my iOS devices

 

[Heebeejeebies]

Ok, Right now my iPad is processing and the spinning circle is working. We'll see if that helps

----------

Didn't work. Still showing the same results. Completely removed from iTunes but still shows the music on my iOS devices

Try turning iTunes Match off and then back on again... This will take a little longer (the cloud next to the music tab on iTunes will keep working for a while), but it helped me with some problems that updating wouldn't solve...

 

[Shadylane315]

Try turning iTunes Match off and then back on again... This will take a little longer (the cloud next to the music tab on iTunes will keep working for a while), but it helped me with some problems that updating wouldn't solve...

Trying this now....